Singing for Love

Now pray what is the cause of this remarkable hilarity? Ken Martin, 69, is fairly sure it’s his dancing. The Mackay Choral Society is rehearsing Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Gondoliers, and “I can’t dance,” admits the retired transport-firm manager and future Duke of Plaza-Toro. The whole choir is laughing, “but it’s me who’s getting it right,” he says. “The rest of them are wrong.”

Musical director Kim Kirkman, 33, whose long hair and goatee fit his role as gondolier Marco, gets his share of giggles, singing female parts in falsetto and doing an improvised dance routine to demonstrate rhythm and emphasis. “We leave you with feelings of plea-sure,” he sings, with a sideways jerk of the hips. “Rehearsals are always fun,” says accountant Jeanette Oberg, 47, who has a small solo part as Giulia, a peasant girl. “The choir members are always on the alert for anything that can be turned into a joke.”

A despotism strict combined/ With absolute equality! “I like to bully, yell, coax them to what I know they’re capable of,” says Kirkman, a lecturer at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music. “I want them to fulfil their potential. I can’t ask more than that.” “Kim can be strict, but nicely so,” says Martin’s wife Bernice, 67. “He sets high standards, but I enjoy that.” And there’s no elitism here, says Oberg: “Anyone can join. You just need to love singing.”

And, if possible, sewing. “Ladies, we need your waist measurement and skirt length,” says Valerie Campbell, 67, who doubles as wardrobe mistress. She holds up one of the peasant costumes the chorus women will wear in the Aug. 24-27 performances: “We’ll have a sewing bee and cut them out; then everyone will take theirs home and sew it up.” The men, who are outnumbered three to one—”we should get a medal,” jokes Ken Martin—are building a gondola. “It’s hard work,” says Campbell, “but it brings us all together.” And “what else are you going to do?” says Martin, who’s been the society’s president for 20 years. “Stay home and watch TV?”

With loving and laughing, And quipping and quaffing, We’re happy as happy can be. “It’s like a family,” says Oberg, who joined the choir two years ago. “You’re dealing with people you’d never normally have contact with, and you grow really fond of them. I can see why some people have been in the choir for years and years. You work together to achieve something, and then you get that burst of applause and you feel enormous pride.”

“Well done,” says Kirkman. “That’s the kind of energy we need.” Now for “the Hallelujah Chorus moment”: The rightful king—let him forthwith be crowned. Fifty voices, aged from 17 to 81, raise the roof.